Dave Johnson on open web technologies, social software and software development
If you want more on Shindig/Java internals, then check this out. Rajdeep Dua has written a very detailed article on the topic and he is asking for feedback: Overview of REST Implementation in Shindig - Java Version.
A lot has changed since I did my first and even my second "how does Shindig/Java work" diagram. Believe it or not, there are now two separate web services protocols in OpenSocial and thus in Shindig. How did that happen you wonder, well read on...
[Read More]My teammates and I have started a new blog over at blogs.sun.com to cover Project SocialSite and to break the big news: we're open!
We are very pleased to announce that source code is now available for Project SocialSite (under a CDDL/GPL license) and the project is now operating as an open source project following the Glassfish governance policy. We're working in the open and welcome contributors of all stripes. Read more...
There will be a OpenSocial Summit: May 14th, at the Googleplex covering the new v0.8 spec changes and all sorts of other interesting things. Wish I could make it, but I'll be happily back home in the old north state. Hopefully, somebody from the SocialSite team will be able to attend.
From the Graphing Social Patterns 2008 conference, a sweet OpenSocial presentation with a nice overview of the emerging standard, status of the Apache Shindig project, details of the Hi5 implementation, some cute pictures of my buddy Pat Chanezon's kids and some very fine art (I think Pat forgot to credit the artist).
I missed this one in my social networking API link-fest yesterday: Google announced version 0.7 of the OpenSocial API, some of the data APIs are outlined in the spec and they're still using AtomPub protocol (just like GData).
I had heard there was some push-back against AtomPub, but I really don't know what is going on because there is no transparency at all in the specification development process. So, who knows, but I really don't think they have time to invent an all new protocol. In fact, they'd better wrap things up tout de suite because Google's planning to go live with OpenSocial on Orkut during the last week of February.
I wrote about Shindig before, it's a new open source project to implement the Google OpenSocial APIs. Well, now the official voting to accept the Shindig project into the Apache Incubator is in progress and some interesting details have emerged in the latest version of the proposal. First, as you can see by the initial list of committers in the proposal Google has joined the Shindig effort in force. Second, the proposal says that Shindig will be the reference implementation of the OpenSocial APIs. And third, Shindig will not only include the client-side JavaScript container but also a Java back-end. Brian McAllister has already made some "gnarly" initial client-side container code available, I can't wait to see the Google contribution.
Apache member Brian McAllister, who works for Ning, has proposed a new project for Apache called Shindig. Here's an excerpt from the proposal:
OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create social applications that use a social network's friends and update feeds. A social application, in this context, is an application run by a third party provider and embedded in a web page, or web application, which consumes services provided by the container and by the application host. This is very similar to Portal/Portlet technology, but is based on client-side compositing, rather than server. More information can be found about OpenSocial at http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial.
Shindig is an implementation of an emerging set of APIs for client-side composited web applications. The Apache Software Foundation has proven to have developed a strong system and set of mores for building community-centric, open standards based systems with a wide variety of participants. A robust, community-developed implementation of these APIs will encourage compatibility between service providers, ensure an excellent implementation is available to everyone, and enable faster and easier application development for users.
. . .
Ning, Inc. intends to donate code based on their implementation of OpenSocial. The backend systems will be replaced with more generic equivalents in order to not bind the implementation to specifics of the Ning platform.
Brian is pretty excited about OpenSocial as a light-weight client-side alternative to Portal/Portlet technology, not just for social apps but for webapps of all kind. He'd like to see both Apache Roller and Apache JSPWIki (incubating) become OpenSocial containers, despite the fact that neither product stores the social graph of user/friend relationships. Blogs and wikis are already great platforms for web development, OpenSocial could make them even stronger. Very interesting stuff.
I hadn't planned on talking OpenSocial during my session tomorrow, but I might have to add a slide or two to illustrate the possibilities.
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